


cheer up

by preromantics



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Fluff, Gen, Gen Fic, five times fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-01
Updated: 2012-10-01
Packaged: 2017-11-15 10:10:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,325
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/526137
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/preromantics/pseuds/preromantics
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everyone has a different approach. <i>“D’you want to talk about it?” Zayn asks, straight forward, voice tinny through the speakers on Liam’s phone as soon as Liam picks up.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	cheer up

**Author's Note:**

> Did a little five times prompt meme on tumblr, so this is just a quick ficlet from the following prompt: _anonymous asked: 1d, liam, 5 times the other guys helped him get through his danielle breakup._
> 
> It's more about some unspecified Liam!sads, though. I swear one day I'll write a real 1D fic that isn't prefaced by something similar to written in an ask box or email in the middle of the night. One day!

1. 

Louis folds himself down on the couch quietly, barely unsettling the nest of blankets Liam’s made himself, and busies himself with his phone. 

It takes about five minutes before Liam can’t stand it, all the things Louis  _isn’t_ saying to him, tapping away at his phone, knees tucked up under his arms, socked feet slipped in a few inches under Liam’s blanket nest. 

“Go on,” Liam says, shifting so the blanket covering most of his face allows him to poke his chin all the way out to speak. (His voice sounds gritty, gross, like he’s got a nasal infection or something. He feels sick enough, even though all the antibiotics in the world would be of no use.)

“Go on with what?” Louis asks, dropping his phone on his lap and turning to Liam. 

“You know,” Liam says, drawing it out. (A peptalk, a talk where they share their feelings. Basically anything similar to what he’s been expecting since Louis showed up.) 

“I really don’t,” Louis says, easy, but when Liam catches his eye he can  _see_ Louis knows. 

Liam pulls his knees up to mirror the way Louis is sitting and rests his head on the blanket pillow bunched up over his knee caps. 

“Your voice sounds like absolute shit right now,” Louis says, with a decisive nod that seems out of place. “I’m going to go make tea while you start up FIFA.”

Liam’s not sure where the remote has gone off to, only that it’s probably going to require untangling himself to find it. When Louis stands he reaches over to squeeze the back of Liam’s neck, the pressure and chill of his palm enough to shake Liam out of a little of his daze.

“Yeah, okay,” he says, delayed, and Louis starts humming from the kitchen.

2. 

“Do you want to jerk off together and watch porn on the flatscreen?” Harry asks cheerfully, sliding onto the couch next to Liam backwards, stretching like a cat. 

“What?” Liam asks, and it’s a testament to how long he’s known Harry now that he can’t even manage to sound incredulous, even though the question is completely out of the blue. He mostly manages tired-sounding.

“Orgasms are good for cheering up, everyone knows,” Harry says, words muffled from where he’s looking at Liam upside-down. He’s got a spoon in his mouth and a stupid grin on his face around it, a pint of ice cream tucked under his arm, reddening his skin. 

“No thanks,” Liam says. 

Harry shrugs, looking ridiculous, and mutters “your loss,” around his spoon.

“You’re going to swallow that and die,” Liam says. “Sit up and share.”

Harry twists around, flailing inches from banging his head on the coffee table, but manages to get himself right side up without dying, spoon still in his mouth.

“Hey, I didn’t get this for you,” Harry says, tucking his ice cream under his other arm when Liam reaches out to grab at it. “I offered mutual orgasms, that’s all, you’re so greedy, Liam.”

Liam eventually wrestles the carton from Harry’s grasp, and if he feels much better after their brief under the table wrestling match, breathless with laughter, he attributes it to the thrill of winning and the sugar of the ice cream. 

3. 

Niall hasn’t stopped strumming nonsense melodies since he strolled out onto Liam’s back deck and plopped down on the chaise a few feet away from where Liam has been — well, Liam was napping, he’s not anymore, is the point. 

“You awake then?” Niall asks when Liam finally sits up and slides his sun glasses up his head. 

“Been awake,” Liam says, waving a hand toward where Niall’s sat with his guitar. “Kind of hard not to be.”

“Sorry,” Niall says, not sounding it at all.

“No where else would have you?” Liam asks.

“Felt like I should be here today, just had a bit of a feeling about it,” Niall says, strumming and catching his words on chord progressions, voice turning sing-songy. 

“Did you?” Liam asks. He wonders if Niall’s going to be the one to ask him about everything, to make him tell him out loud that he’s fine. Working on being fine, at least.

Niall shrugs, strums a little. “Want to rewrite one of our songs as dirty as possible over a pint?”

“I’m not as good at that as the rest of you,” Liam says. 

“Sure you are,” Niall says. “You just don’t want us to know how good you really are, or we’d be putting you in charge of all the words that rhyme with fuck.”

“Duck,” Liam says, automatically, and Niall pulls a face that Liam can’t help but laugh at.

4. 

“D’you want to talk about it?” Zayn asks, straight forward, voice tinny through the speakers on Liam’s phone as soon as Liam picks up.

“Hi to you, too,” Liam says dryly. 

Zayn huffs out a breath that sounds like an aborted laugh, and Liam leans over to shut his bedside lamp off.

“Yeah,” he says, tucking his phone in-between his ear and his pillow. “If you’re up for — yeah, actually. I might — I would like that.”

“Phone battery is all charged,” Zayn says, and Liam can hear a rustling noise that makes it sound like Zayn’s settling in, too. 

Liam’s eyes feel heavy, his throat a little dry, but he swallows and starts to speak over Zayn’s steady breathing on the other end of the line.

5. 

Liam only rarely regrets giving everyone a key to his place. Well, that’s a lie, he regrets it at least once a day, sometimes multiple times, always for different reasons. (“You can’t throw up on another rug, Harry, there are only so many places I can buy rugs in London before it gets out that I’m some sort of serial rug-ruiner or something.” “Didn’t you just buy the same exact coffee bean grinder, Lou? It’s  _early._ ” “When you run out of paper in the middle of the night you can’t just doodle on the  _walls_ and call it art, Zayn! I’ll have to paint over that when I want to resell, y’know.”)

This morning is one of those days where he regrets having all those keys made up.

“This bed is not big enough!” he says, for the fourth or fifth time in as many minutes, dodging someone’s errant elbow. 

“Sure it is,” Louis says, too cheerfully for whatever time it is. 

Niall’s waving a DVD case in Liam’s face; Harry’s feet are bare and freezing where they’ve wormed their way under the blankets to press at Liam’s hips, pushing him out of the bed.

“I’ve got the take out menus from the kitchen,” Zayn says, wandering in the room just as Liam rolls over and off the side of his bed. “So we won’t have to get up for food later.”

“Excellent,” Niall says. 

“Not excellent,” Liam says, still half-awake, unsure of how he went from peacefully sleeping to being woken up by his band (well, officially woken up by Harry belly-flopping onto his mattress and Zayn blowing into his ear like a weirdo) for a day of marathoning whatever DVD that’s been pressed into his hand and lying around in bed. 

He puts it into the player anyway and lets someone manhandle him back into bed from behind. Maybe he’ll change his locks at some point, but whoever is sort of patting his head in a comforting way from behind is alright, so he’s not in a hurry to rush out for a new set of keys.

For now he just grins when the title screen comes up and Niall knocks their knees together from over Zayn’s thigh and everyone moves at once to cover Harry’s face with a pillow when he starts blowing raspberries into his to-go cup of coffee. 

“I hate you all,” Liam says, and he sounds embarrassingly happy about it on accident, but no one calls him out on it.


End file.
